Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

The relationship between foodtech platforms and their restaurant partners can hardly be called a happy affair for much of the decade or so that these platforms have been around in India. 

Just the previous week, foodtech platform Swiggy faced the ire of restaurants who logged out of its dining platform Dineout en masse to protest against the high discounts they were asked to offer. Rival Zomato, too, was in the same boat back in 2019 with its Infinity Dining program. 

In fact, this rift resulted in an #OrderDirect campaign gaining steam last year. Restaurants were even sending notes with orders delivered via Swiggy and Zomato encouraging customers to order directly, promising better rates and exclusive discounts. Then, last month, the National Restaurants Association of India (NRAI) asked restaurants to avoid using dine-in payment options like Zomato Pay or Swiggy Diner, highlighting concerns like the loss of customer data, unilateral terms, and additional discounts.

So yeah—foodtech platforms and restaurants have hardly been happy campers. 

Until this week, when Zomato took the restaurants’ side. 

For a few hours, anyway.

When Zomato and restaurants were on the same side—briefly

On 30 October, Twitter user Disha Sanghvi kicked off a furore when she posted Zomato’s response to a review she’d left on what is arguably one of Bengaluru’s most popular restaurants—Truffles. 

The food, she claimed, had left her and her colleague with food poisoning. So that’s what she said in her review. 

Which Zomato promptly removed. 

This was its rationale:

TL;DR: Zomato’s position was that it was not the “appropriate platform for reporting health code violations”. 

If you find that just a little bit infuriating, you’re not alone. Because Twitter basically exploded with irate users calling out Zomato for its lack of customer care, and for shielding restaurants that seemed to be violating health standards. 

But here’s the thing. This has been Zomato’s policy for a while now—clearly mentioned on their policy page, which says, reviewers should “seek help from the right people”.

And to take this further, restaurants even had the option to flag such reviews on their Zomato dashboard, which looked a bit like this.

Do note that there’s a clear option to report reviews mentioning health code violations, such as those that make references to foreign food objects in food/cutlery, or to people falling sick after consuming food.